house.”
He understood and set out immediately to police the perimeter.
Before he was out of the kitchen, I said, “No heroics. If You see
anything wrong, bark your head off and come running straight back
here.”
He padded out of sight.
Immediately, I regretted having sent him, even though I knew it was the
right thing to do.
The first monkey had emptied its bladder, and now the second one had
turned to face the kitchen and had begun to loose his own stream.
Others were scampering along the handrail outside and swinging from the
porch-roof rafters.
Bobby was sitting directly opposite the window that was adjacent to the
table. He searched that comparatively calm part of the night with
suspicion equal to mine.
The lightning seemed to have passed, but volleys of thunder still
boomed across the sea. This cannonade excited the troop.
“I hear the new Brad Pitt movie is really hot,” Bobby said.
Sasha said, “Haven’t seen it.”
“I always wait for video,” I reminded him.
Something tried the door to the back porch. The knob rattled and
squeaked, but the lock was securely engaged.
The two monkeys at the sink windows dropped away. Two more sprang up
from the porch to take their places, and both began to urinate on the
glass.
Bobby said, “I’m not cleaning this up.”
“Well, I’m not cleaning it up,” Sasha declared.
“Maybe they’ll get their aggression and anger out this way and then
just leave,” I said.
Bobby and Sasha appeared to have studied withering sarcastic
expressions at the same school.
“Or maybe not,” I reconsidered.
From out of the night, a stone about the size of a cherry pit struck
one of the windows, and the peeing monkeys dropped away to escape from
the line of fire. More small stones quickly followed the first,
rattling like hail.
No stones were flung at the nearest window.
Bobby plucked the shotgun from the floor and placed it across his
lap.
When the barrage was at its peak, it abruptly ended.
The frenzied monkeys were screaming more fiercely now.
Their escalating cries were shrill, eerie, and seemed to have
supernatural effect, feeding back into the night with such demonic
energy that rain pounded the cottage harder than ever. Merciless
hammers of thunder cracked the shell of the night, and once again
bright tines of lightning dug at the meat of the sky.
A stone, larger than any in the previous assault, rebounded off one of
the sink windows: map. A second of approximately the same size
immediately followed, thrown with greater force than the first.
Fortunately their hands were too small to allow them to hold and
properly operate pistols or revolvers; and with their relatively low
body weight, they would be kicked head over heels by the recoil. These
creatures were surely smart enough to understand the purpose and
operation of handguns, but at least the horde of geniuses in the Wyvern
labs hadn’t chosen to work with gorillas.
Although, if the idea occurred to them, they would no doubt immediately
seek funding for that enterprise and would not only provide the
gorillas with firearms training but instruct them, as well, in the fine
points of nuclear-weapons design.
Two more stones snapped against the targeted window glass.
I touched the cell phone clipped to my belt. There ought to be someone
we could call for help. Not the police, not the FBI. If the former
responded, the friendly officers on the Moonlight Bay force would
probably provide cover fire for the monkeys. Even if we could get
through to the nearest office of the FBI and could sound more credible
than all the callers reporting abduction by flying saucers, we would be
talking to the enemy; Manuel Ramirez said the decision to let this
nightmare play itself out had been made at “very high levels,” and I
believed him.
With a concession of responsibility unmatched by generating ions before
ours, we have entrusted our lives and futures to professionals and
experts who convince us that we have too little knowledge or wit to
make any decisions of importance about the management of society. This
is the consequence of our gullibility and laziness.